Facebook is wrong, text is deathless

Re:Facebook is wrong, text is deathless by Tharkun on Saturday June 18, 2016 @11:51AM (#11929104)

> structures meant for

"Meant"? Nothing in your body or brain is "meant" for anything. There is no "meaning", or "intention", for starters. And the brain is nothing if not adaptable. If your brain is "meant" to be anything, it's versatile.

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Re:Facebook is wrong, text is deathless by Johnny555 on Saturday June 18, 2016 @12:34PM (#11929287)

I think pretty much everything in your body is specialized and is "meant" for something. No matter how hard you try, you're not going to get your heart to replace your pancreas or kidneys. And you can't replace your lungs with brain tissue. Sure, doctors can transplant a toe to replace a thumb or a heart blood vessel with a vein from a leg with great success, but it's doing pretty much the same function, just in a different place.

As a whole, humans are quite adaptable to their environment, but specific body parts tend to be specialized.

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Re:Facebook is wrong, text is deathless by tremon on Saturday June 18, 2016 @03:10PM (#11930111)

you can't replace your lungs with brain tissue

No, but the brain can replace brain tissue for one task with brain tissue for another task. It's called neuroplasticity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity#Treatment_of_b...

I agree with the GP, if there's one characterization that applies to the brain, it's "versatile".

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Re:Facebook is wrong, text is deathless by sandworm101 on Saturday June 18, 2016 @11:57AM (#11929127)

There are parts of the brain meant for specific tasks. It isn't a homogeneous mass of neurons. The bit that is working the eyes atm was designed (via evolution) to work the eyes. As was the bit that takes the message from the eyes and ups the heart rate when a lion appears in your field of view. There is certainly some flexibility, but the basic task layout is a layout, not a random allocation.

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Re:Facebook is wrong, text is deathless by nommm-nommm on Saturday June 18, 2016 @01:23PM (#11929574)

>The bit that is working the eyes atm was designed (via evolution) to work the eyes.

Evolution is a random process, there is no designing, there's no goals.

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Re:Facebook is wrong, text is deathless by evanws on Saturday June 18, 2016 @01:37PM (#11929672)

You know exactly what he meant. You are using the word design in a different way than him.

There's absolutely a part of the brain that specializes processing visual information, just as there are organs throughout the rest of your body that specialize with other different tasks.

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Re:Facebook is wrong, text is deathless by sandworm101 on Saturday June 18, 2016 @01:35PM (#11929654)

(1) Evolution is not random. Mutation may be random, but feature selection is based on a rule.

(2) There is a goal: species survival.

(3) The only rule is that whatever aids (2) is a rule for purposes of (1).

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Re:Facebook is wrong, text is deathless by gumby on Saturday June 18, 2016 @02:42PM (#11929989)

Species survival? Gene reproduction you mean. The organism is simply a way for the gene to propagate itself.

Check out Dawkins' The Selfish Gene.

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Re:Facebook is wrong, text is deathless by sandworm101 on Saturday June 18, 2016 @03:10PM (#11930109)

I disagree with Dawkins. If genes were the unit for evolution, we wouldn't exists. We would all just be bacteria spewing out copies of genes, with the planet buried in a pile of tiny protein chains. Genes are the servants of the species. They are a tool used by species to pass on traits, or even to acquire traits from other species. Genes are inert absent a species using them.

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Re:Facebook is wrong, text is deathless by 8note on Sunday June 19, 2016 @12:19PM (#11933458)

that suggests that once born, an individual could have all of their genes removed, and be perfectly fine, other than not being able to pass on traits to a new individual.

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Re:Facebook is wrong, text is deathless by sandworm101 on Sunday June 19, 2016 @01:01PM (#11933637)

Yes. Genes and DNA are not the same thing. DNA is a means of recording and passing along genes. And alien organism that doesn't use our system of DNA/RNA could still possess genes. So it is theoretically possible to remove all manifestations of genes and have the organism continue to function.

This is not very far fetched. Much of our DNA is used for a short time during development and then effectively turns off for the rest of our life. Taking that DNA away might go unnoticed.

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Re:Facebook is wrong, text is deathless by 8note on Sunday June 19, 2016 @12:41PM (#11933546)

meaning is a nice convention to signify that something works well for some use case.

like, you didn't intend to type anything, it was just a series random processes that resulted in some text, but by convention, it's nice to say that you meant to write something.

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